Pulling Strings
by MeLaNch0LYdreams
Summary: Izaya is diagnosed as a paraplegic for life. Shizuo, feeling guilty takes responsibility. Too bad he's not handicapped.
1. Chapter 1

**Pulling Strings**

"So I'll come around six?"

"You better!" he teased lightly, grunting as he was thrown over the blond's shoulder. "Oof! Be more gentle with my body Shizu-chan, it's well past it's prime." Shizuo looked guilt ridden in no time.

"S-sorry, I-"

A hand found his own and Shizuo fought his rising blush as the brunette began to speak.

"It was a joke," he said softly, and the ex-bartender didn't need to meet Izaya's eyes to read their sincerity.

All was still for a moment. "So...I'll be over later?"

Izaya grinned as he was set down on the queen sized mattress, the multitude of casts was staggering in comparison to his body and never failed to send a fresh torrent of pain through the blonde.

"What did I say earlier? 6 o'clock on the dot!" Izaya lowered his lashes and jut out his hip in what Shizuo supposed to be was a provocative positioned. "In fact..." The cripple lightly bit his lip, and he stifled laughter at the absurdity of the situation. "I'd like you to stay over a little bit after dinner...if you wouldn't mind?"

All in all, the blatant flirting was not lost on the blond and worked its magic. If Shizuo hadn't been red before, he now resembled a beet in color. "Um, S-sure!"

The ex-bartender left, back tense and ramrod straight and mumbled a quick 'bye' as he marched stiffly away from the spacious apartment.

Izaya watched him leave with a warm smile, and faded as the blond disappeared farther into the distance.

"Tch. These stupid things are annoying!" He kicked off the casts with all the force he could, doing the same to his arm. He flopped back in bed, curling his toes and fingers and sat up, beginning to stretch.

"O-k! No morning is complete without a bit of activity!"

He shed his shirt, two long white raised scars poised on his back, each stretching from shoulder to hip.

He turns up the music as loud as he can get away with and finds the treadmill soon after.


	2. Chapter 2

**Pulling Strings**

"You should tell him."

He blinks incomprehensibly at his assistant, working quietly and diligently as if she had never spoken. "What do you mean?"

Namie rolls her eyes and tosses some hair over her shoulder.

"You know exactly what I mean. That brute you've adopted."

It's almost cute how she unknowingly steals nicknames from him.

"I asked 'What,' not 'Who' Na-mi-e-chan!"

She glared mutely at him and turned away.

"If your thinking of salvaging some kind of bond between the both of you, the truth will come out sooner or later. Better now than ever before he can start to resent you."

"Namie, I thin you've ignored the vital part where he already resents me."

"You don't know that."

"Oh Namie! Have you been bit by the compassionate bug? Well alas, it does not exist." He focuses a disdainful glare at her pen. "And neither does this attitude in my office."

She gawked and stared at him in disbelief. "What?"

"You heard me, get out. Before I dock your pay."

She glared back for the longest time, and regained her coat and left with the slam of a door. He sighed when she left and sank back into his cushions. "Where to find good workers?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Pulling Strings**

"Kida-kuuuuuunnnn!"

"Die."

"Aww! Don't be like that! I may have to dock your pay."

"I don't work for you anymore."

"Tsk, tsk, let's not play any games right now! I need a desktop that needs fixing, and poor old me can't move around to get it!"

"Why don't you call Heiwajima-san?"

"Why call him when I can get one of my sla-employees to help me instead?"

"You intentionally stuttered, didn't you?"

"What can I say? I'm a troll, through and through!"

"..."

"We'll start off with 20,000 yen*-"

"I'll be there in a heartbeat Taichou!*"

Izaya walks the wheelchair to the door, sits in it, and pretends to seem like he has trouble opening the door. It works, because the blond is trying to hide his irritated expression. "Took you long enough!"

He laughs with just the right amount of half-hardheartedness that only a veteran war amps can pull off. "My bad, slave!"

Kida frowns but goes right to business, staring at the knocked over computer.

"How the hell did you manage this?"

"Trying to grasp the art of multitasking. As you can see, it was a failure."

The blond rolled his eyes and plopped down to the floor.

"I don't know how to fix this, walk me through it?" The blond seems to realize his slip of tongue too late and visibly freezes. For a youth of many words, the boy looked generally speechless.

No matter how much he does to Kida, he knows deep down that Kida Masaomi is just another human. He will go through life under the impression that he hates the informant in the black fur coat, but he'll come to his aid, even when he is in a wheelchair. It's not just pity, because if he wasn't posing as a paraplegic, the boy would have come anyways.

But for now, he enjoys the blond's change of attitude.

His face is already blank, and he keeps his voice level. "Masaomi."

"Don't call me that, old man." The blond croaks, voice thick and quiet.

He allows himself to chuckle a little. "How am I old? I'm only 26!"

Kida's back is turned, but he's started to hunch into himself. He outwardly sighs, genuinely wondering the strangeness of humans. He would have expected this kind of reaction from Mikado rather than Masaomi. It's refreshing to see a different side of the teen, but if he doesn't resolve this situation sooner, his constructed reality he worked so hard to build would be shattered.

"Masaomi, it's OK."

He hears loud sniffing and massages his temple.

"Come on, I'm paying you by the hour. Get to work!" His playful tenor is back and it seems to work because he receives a vigorous nod.

He wheels himself as close as possible as he can without getting elbowed in the knee as the teen pushes and pulls on thick cables coming from the motherboard. It's a problem he could have fixed himself, but it would seem irregular if he didn't appear to have any problems at all. He had already done it several times to Shizuo. The first and only time he tried to deceive Namie had resulted in her knowing of the truth, kept under lock and key.

When the teen had come to the apartment, the big south facing windows showed clear blue skies. But as the afternoon dragged on, clouds gathered and a light drizzle had started. Maybe he should have taken it as an omen.

The added stress of not leaving the chair all day was getting to him, Kida not understanding the simple _'It goes here_' was frustrating him, and he really, really, needed to pee.

In hindsight, he should have waited.

"What is wrong with you!" He pushed the wheelchair back with such force that it wheeled back into the leather couch and flipped over the arm rest.

He dropped to his knees in front of the blond and had rewired the mainframe in mere minutes. He turned back around, glare directed towards the teen. "See? The ports are even _labeled_!"

The impulse of leaving the chair hadn't occurred to him when he did it, but the blond's speechless expression quickly made him realize that he did.

"You...You.."

All the revulsion and disgust that a single person could muster was on the blond's face. His face flushed red and he started to breath hard, fists shaking with barely suppressed rage.

Abruptly, he jumped to his feet, jabbing his fingers as if they were knives to his chest.

"I thought you _changed_! I felt _sorry_ for you! You have reached a whole new level of sick!"

He retracted his fingers and stepped back, eyes widened as he fixed his eyes to some point above his head, the brown orbs harboring disbelief. "I can't believe I bought into all this. I can't believe I wasn't smarter."

He seemed to notice his boss again because the glare was back in full force.

"I thought you were different."

Somewhere in his chest, he felt a pang on his chest. His breathing started to labor quietly, rising in volume as the blond started to list his disgust with the fraud.

"...I thought Shizuo-san made you a better person."

The blond's eyes flashed. "I'm telling Shizuo."

Before the blond had even left the apartment, his head had hit the floor.

He clawed at the hardwood, gasping for breath.

_"Nonononononononononononono."_

His lungs burned for air, black spots started to eat away at his vision, the floor disappeared beneath him, the sensation feeling like a thousand rats were running rampant, carrying him deeper into the ground.

It felt like dying.

And those rats started to get colder, vertigo settling in. His body felt sizes too small, too tight. His heart thundered like a jackhammer against his ribcage.

He fought his tunnel vision towards the open door, reaching out in a last ditch attempt to fight the rats.

They won.

*Taichou: Captain

*20,000 yen: 200 dollars or more approximately


	4. Chapter 4

**Pulling Strings**

"We'll start physio in two months then-"

"Are you out of your mind? He just had a panic attack! He's in no condition to be-"

"I hope you'll refrain from doubting my authority because last I checked, you weren't the one with a medical degree Heiwajima."

"And what good use it does collecting dust in your closet."

"I'm a doctor. I know what's best for him. At best, we can let him leave in two days."

"Two days? That's awfully quick."

"What did I say? He isn't as delicate as you think."

The voices washed over him for a great dull, their tones were calming and his heavy eyes fluttered, felling an odd pricking taste in the back of his throat.

After a great deal of effort, he opened his eyes a sliver.

He can barely make out a mural he recalls that Celty painted to 'calm down patients.' It resembled the ones you see in gynecologist's offices*.

He opens his eyes by a fraction, the ring of Japanese maples makes him feel like he is lying down in some Kyoto park, staring at the sky.

He spends so much time trying to trace every blend in color he doesn't notice the modest knock and creak of a door.

"He didn't do it, you know."

He doesn't have the energy to turn his head, and his eyes feel heavy.

"Kida. He didn't tell Shizuo. He called Namie when you got the panic attack."

Panic attack?

"Shizuo really loves you. If you tell him, he'll come around eventually."

The phantom slips from the room, and if he gives in to the temptation to sleep.

gynecologist's office*: Not that Izaya would know! Keep in mind his assistant is a doctor ;) But yeah, I've read this in reference that some doctor came up with the concept of painting a mural on the cieling to divert your attention from whatever is going on down...there!


End file.
